Episcopal Church aging and out of touch survey finds: The Church of England Newspaper, April 8, 2011 p 8.

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori protesting US immigration policies on the Arizona border in 2010.

First published in The Church of England Newspaper.

The leadership of the Episcopal Church is out of touch and unrepresentative of its membership, a report published by the national church’s statistics office reveals.

A paper released last month by the church’s department for Congregational and Diocesan Ministries finds the membership of the national church is evenly divided along theological grounds, and also offers a snapshot of the denomination’s health.

Based upon responses received from 837 Episcopal parishes the findings paint a picture of an aging and divided church.

Over half, 52.4 per cent, of the congregations are small, with an average worship attendance of less than 70 people with the median parish having 66 persons at Sunday worship in 2009, a decline of 15 per cent since the fight over the consecration of Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire.

The median Episcopal congregation had 160 members in 2009, down from 182 in 2003.  Sixty per cent of these members are female, 86.7 per cent are of European (white) descent, and 69 per cent of all congregations report more than half of their members are over 50 years of age.

Episcopalians are older than their neighbors, with 30 per cent aged 65 or older, compared to a national average of 13 per cent.  Children and young people are found in Episcopal congregations at less than half their rate in the general population, the survey found.

Some 89 per cent of Episcopal congregations reported having conflicts or disagreements in the last five years, with “ordination of gay priests or bishops” cited as the “most frequently mentioned source of conflict.”  This rate of conflict within the church is down somewhat from the rate of 93 per cent in 2005 and 90 per cent in 2008.  However, of congregations that had serious conflict: 93 per cent saw members leave the church, 50 per cent saw members withhold funds, and 26 per cent saw staff turnover.

The proportion of parishes in financial difficulty rose sharply over the past decade.  Only 28 per cent of congregations reported being in “excellent” or “good” financial shape in the survey, compared to 56 per cent in 2000.

While the national church’s leadership as reflected in the Presiding Bishop, Executive Council, the elected Deputies to the General Convention and its bishops have swung sharply to the left over the past decade, this trend has not been repeated among people in the pews.  These findings have also been reflected in the disconnect between the pronouncements of the House of Bishops on social issues, most always from a left wing perspective, and surveys of membership on issues such as immigration and economics, which find the church’s members more closely aligned with national secular survey samples.

The survey found the church evenly divided along theological grounds.

5 per cent call themselves “very liberal or progressive”; 24 per cent call themselves “somewhat liberal or progressive”; 41 per cent call themselves “moderate”; 23 per cent call themselves “somewhat conservative”; 7 per cent call themselves “conservative”.

The report also found that conservative congregations were “much more likely to have experienced serious conflict during the last five years regarding the ordination of gay clergy than more liberal congregations,” the report found.